Last week, DC Comics and Ram V unleashed The Vigil, one of three new titles comprising the publisher’s We Are Legends imprint. This week (May 23), we get another such title in the form of City Boy.
Written by Greg Pak, and with art from Minkyu Jung, City Boy follows Cameron Kim, who debuted earlier this spring as part of the Wildstorm 30th Anniversary Special. In that title, we learned that Cameron, much like that team’s own Jack Hawksmoor, has a special connection with and power over cities. And after Cameron’s story was fleshed out further in Lazarus Planet: Legends Reborn (where his powers are amplified thanks to a Lazarus storm), we’re lead to the start of his titular series. That book, per solicitations, sees him further exploring his powers, his own origins as a young orphan, and what connection he might have not only to Gotham City but other famed locales like Blüdhaven, Amnesty Bay, and Themyscira.
City Boy is, despite being still early on in its run, a poignant new series — one that not only honors and uplifts a new AAPI hero but makes readers think long and hard about motifs like family, purpose, destiny, and even the role of cities in our daily lives. To better understand it, though, we recently caught up with Pak via email. We discussed, among other topics, the Jack-Cameron connection, the development of Cameron’s powers, and the larger value and meaning of representation.
Courtesy of DC Comics.
AIPT: What can you further tease about the Jack-Cameron dynamic/relationship? Are we going to see more of that play out in this series?
Greg Pak: We had a fantastic time putting Jack Hawksmoor and Cameron Kim up against each other in the Wildstorm 30th Anniversary Special. Both heroes have powers intimately linked to cities, but that story let us establish some important distinctions in the origin and nature of their powers which should be fun to explore further when the time comes. But even more importantly, we got the chance to establish Cameron’s character as an irreverent hustler with a genuine dark side, which has been a ton of fun to write and really raises the stakes for the new series.
AIPT: What drew you to the whole city-based superpower trope or idea in the first place?
GP: I live in New York City and have always been fascinated by how you can walk down the street and see evidence of hundreds of years of history in the most mundane of things. So the idea of a character who can read all those clues, who can tap into the millions of secrets of the city, has been in the back of my head for years. When editor Jessica Chen approached me about creating a new character for this series, I threw the idea out and she immediately was intrigued. I think it’s a fantastic fit with this initiative of Asian American stories because of how intimately the history of cities is tied into ideas of immigration and diversity and outsiders of all kinds finding or not finding their communities and homes.
Courtesy of DC Comics.
AIPT: What do cities actually represent for Cameron?
GP: I love the way Cameron’s basic impulse is to be a hustler instead of a hero. As the first few pages of the first issue imply, he’s been an enormous underdog his whole life and he’s mainly just trying to survive. That means his relationship with the city has always been contentious — he’s fighting to survive, learning secrets in order to scrounge a living. So when he gets his powers, he doesn’t throw on a cape and start saving people — he uses them to keep on hustling, and finds himself shoved into heroism almost against his will. It also means that when pushed in certain ways, he could go to a much darker place than some more comfortable heroes, much like any city can be as brutal and dangerous as it is bright and shiny.
AIPT: There’s some displays in issue #1, but how are Cameron’s powers going to develop across this series?
GP: I don’t want to spoil too much, but things will amp up in some pretty spectacular ways. One of the things I love about this series is that it starts with Cameron using his powers to find a few bucks in the sewer and amps up to mind-blowing stakes — and it all makes perfect sense in the end.
Courtesy of DC Comics.
I’d also love to give huge props to artist Minkyu Jung, colorist Sunny Gho, and letterer Wes Abbott, who have done such tremendous work finding brilliant ways to depict Cameron’s character and powers in the book. There’s a lot of subtle magic going on and they’re making it all come to life so beautifully!
AIPT: Is there a previous hero or title that you’d compare to writing or developing City Boy?
GP: Every project becomes its own beast, and I love the way City Boy has let me play to my strengths while stretching entirely new muscles. For example, with books like Planet Hulk, I got loads of experience with fantastical worldbuilding. Writing City Boy has demanded a huge amount of worldbuilding and mythmaking, but in a much more grounded way that reflects the actual cities we walk through and live in every day.
I also love that I’m probably best known at DC for my work on Superman, who’s such a gloriously lawful good character, while Cameron’s so aggressively chaotic. Just tremendously fun doing different things there — and I get to really have my cake and eat it too when Cameron meets Superman in issue #3!
Courtesy of DC Comics.
AIPT: There’s the reveal of a (really) big bad at the end of issue #1. What can you tease about the direction things are heading?
GP: One of the big thrills about working on this book has been the constant discovery of the way this theme of cities opens doors to do some spectacular things that really have an impact within the wider DC universe. DC has always done incredibly special things with cities — so many cities in the DC comics mythology have their own personality and character. And so many characters are tied to cities in very special ways. So a character like Cameron who has a special bond with cities can have really interesting interactions with a slew of DC characters and locations.
And in this specific case, Cameron can be an incredibly valuable tool to certain villains for reasons that make perfect and terrifying sense when you think about them for a minute or two. I was so excited to get the green light to run with this particular thread — can’t wait for y’all to see how it all plays out!
AIPT: What does representation actually mean for you in terms of telling stories like this one?
GP: It’s always been a big deal to me. I grew up at a time when it was vanishingly rare to see a non-stereotypical depiction of an Asian or Asian American character in American pop culture. So it’s been huge to have the chance to write so many Asian and Asian-American characters in comics over the years, and to see so many other Asian American creators creating so many great characters and stories. I particularly love what Jessica Chen’s doing with this We Are Legends imprint — introducing a slew of new characters and stories all at once, which opens the door to a real variety of characters and stories. My big thing has always been diversity within diversity.
There’s no one, singular Asian American story — there are as many different stories as there are actual Asian Americans walking the planet. So the fact that a bunch of us are telling very different stories all at once feels real and fun and true and incredibly exciting. Happy and grateful to be here, and hope you all enjoy it!
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